My beloved Heidi died of her metastatic breast cancer(Stage 4) on September 24, 2012. My (Joe) bladder cancer is in remission and my prostate cancer was surgically removed, with ongoing PSA monitoring for potential metastasis.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Knowing who you are -by Heidi

Spending time in SCCA's Chapel

I have been spending a fair amount of time lately hanging out on the couch. Somehow I envisioned being productive while being on the couch. I thought, "ok, so you are not energetic, you can still read, you can talk on the phone, you can knit, you can pray". But reality (as usual) has not been so rosy. When I feel bad enough to lay on the couch, it is like a horrible cold with malaise. I don't want to do anything. And if I force myself, it comes out badly. I lose track of the conversation when I am talking with a dear friend. My knitting needs to be pulled out because I didn't notice mistakes. Words don't flow they way I want when I am trying to write a note. My concentration is WAY down so I will forget in the middle of a prayer what I am praying. This, by the way, is where reading a prayer written by someone else or reading scripture helps me. God has to just manage with prayers He has heard before :) !

Support from SCCA's Chaplaincy Director

This has brought me back to my insidious expectation that who I am = what I do. I know in my head what a lie that is. My emotions and self-image are slow to come along. I have appreciated James Pyles blog for several years but this one really hit me between the eyes. Especially his quote from Rabbi Tzvi Freeman and exposition from it.
"From a point before and beyond all things, G-d looked upon a moment in time to be, and saw there a soul, distant from Him in a turbulent world, yet yearning to return to Him and His oneness. And He saw the pleasure He would have from this union.
So He invested His infinite light into that finite image, and became one with that image, and in that image He created each one of us.
As for that moment He saw, that was the moment now.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“G-d’s Image”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. SchneersonChabad.org"
This quiets my emotions, reminds me that all doing comes from God's being, not my scurrying around checking off lists.

5 comments:

I know oh so well the fatigue and listlessness that sets in after chemo treatments. You have my sincere sympathies. I also know how the guilty feeling that sets in to accuse when we don't(CAN'T) do even the simplest of things for days at a time. Been there, done . . . well, very little.

One thing I can recommend in addition to what you are already doing is listening to an audio Bible. For myself, the Alexander Scourby KJV reading is the absolute definitive one, even though I study and my church uses the ESV. I can't tell you how much having that available helped me during (and after) my treatments.

thank you John. I generally don't do that well with listening to audio stuff (I must be the only Ipod less person on the planet) but based on your recommendation, I am going to try this. I do have audio tapes of the bible.

At our home fellowship last Friday, a young woman (an oncology nurse as luck would have it) said, "Humility is such a hard virtue because you can't 'do' it yourself. Other people, hardship, God's intervention. . . must humble me. I can't follow a checklist to make myself humble."

This isn't at all to say that you weren't humble before this uninvited visitor (cancer) knocked on the door. Just that those times of loss of focus, loss of fluency and malaise are so (drat it!) humbling!!!

You are precious, so precious to God and the family of Christ you can't even know. As Lala LaPechkin (a former co-worker of mine) said, "We not only want to be loved. We want to be loved for the reasons we want to be loved." This may be because if I think everyone who loves me loves me for my guitar playing, then I can practice guitar and thus guarantee their continuing to love me.

We don't love you for your changing moods (I of all people know how fickle moods are), or witty repartee, or knitting. We love you because you are part of the Bride and Body of Christ.

It's a secret deep in the heart of God. . . In that Psalm 139 place where you were skillfully wrought and wondrously made.

I like Matthew 11: 28-30 "Come unto Me all ye who labor and are heavily laden. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in ways, and you will find rest for your souls."

We plow our little furrows in what seems to us to be a straight line. Christ's destined glory for us may be beyond the horizen where we don't even have a line of sight to see it. But He is our Home from where we were conceived and born; and He is our Home to Whom we plow. He has and does and longs to do the heavy lifting.

This is a very powerful post, and it is so difficult to remember when we are in that state of chemo inflicted "malaise" to remember our source. I used to say that chemo stole my soul, because I felt so lost, so empty, and your courage and strength, and amazing knowledge and grace is such a blessing for everyone, not just people who are coping with cancer.